The
Yorkshire Ripper’s home

In England the most famous murderers in recent history have come
from the north: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley of Hattersley, Harold Shipman of
Hyde and Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper) of Bradford. I was a boy when
Peter Sutcliffe was on the loose and it seemed like years passed before he was caught.
I can remember playing out and knowing he was out there and could kill anyone
again at any time. Here I am outside his home where he lived when he was
carrying out the murders (still owned by his wife.)

In 1981
Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering thirteen women and trying to murder seven
others. Normally he bludgeoned them with a hammer from behind then mutilated
their bodies with screwdrivers and knives. Even though I was a boy and he only
killed women I can remember being a bit scared. Women in Yorkshire and Greater
Manchester were advised by police to walk home in company and prostitutes were advised
to work in pairs. He was always one step ahead of the police and injected
terror across the country.

West
Yorkshire Police were criticised for taking so much time to catch Sutcliffe. He
had a record of violence which should have sounded alarm bells: aged 23 he assaulted
a prostitute he had met whilst searching for a woman who had tricked him out of
money (hit her over the head with a stone in a sock) then at 29 he struck a
woman with a hammer and gashed her stomach with a knife. He would have probably
killed her but was disturbed by a neighbour. Shortly after he attacked again using
the same method of approaching from behind and hitting hard a single hammer
blow. Soon he attacked a 14-year-old girl but beams off a car’s headlights
scared him away.

The murders
started when he was working as a truck driver for T & WH Clark (Holdings)
Ltd in Bradford. In Chapeltown in Leeds he hit a
woman with a hammer and stabbed her 15 times leaving four children without a
mother (one daughter killing herself after years of depression over her
mother's death.) The murder spree had started and Sutcliffe’s job as a driver
meant nobody knew exactly where he was. The next woman was selling sex from the
family van. Sutcliffe killed her but left the first clue: the impression of his
boot when he stamped hard on her thigh. Next it was a 20-year old who accepted
the offer of a lift from Sutcliffe. She left the car to have a wee and he
hammered her from behind. Somehow she survived but lost the four month old baby
growing inside her.

I won’t go
through all the murders here but it was known that Sutcliffe attacked
prostitutes but some of the victims weren’t. Reporters thought he’d had a bad
experience during which he was conned out of money though he was probably just
evil.

On 14 December 1977
he attacked Marilyn Moore, another prostitute from Leeds. She survived and
provided police with a description of her attacker. For the first time they
could produce a picture: a swarthy man, black hair, black beard. Tyre tracks
found at the scene matched those from an earlier attack. Ironically the police
had the killer under the eyes all the time - they’d sat and had a cup of coffee
with him at this home and interviewed him many times.

Suddenly the
killing stopped for a year. Later it was found Sutcliffe’s mum had died in November
1978 and it must have suppressed his appetite for murder.

He must have
loved it when the hoax “I am Jack” cassette was sent to the police (and two
letters.) The Ripper Squad were put off his traces for a while (in October 2005
an unemployed alcoholic was sentenced to eight years in prison for the hoax.)

Aged 33 Sutcliffe was arrested for
drunk-driving but killed two more women while awaiting trial. An associate
reported him to the police as a suspect but the information disappeared into
the mountain of paperwork the investigation had created. The investigation had
generated so much paperwork that the floor at the police investigation office
had to be reinforced.

He was caught by
accident. Aged 34 he was stopped by the police in his car in Sheffield, a
prostitute by his side. He said he was bursting for a wee and, slipping away for
a moment, threw down a hammer, knife and rope. A routine check found the car
wore false number plates and Sutcliffe was arrested. The police searched his
car and found nothing but nearby they found the murder tools. Later at the
police station they found a second knife hidden in the toilet cistern. The prostitute
in the car was definitely going to be murdered as the police found out at the
station when Sutcliffe stripped off. Weirdly he was wearing a V-neck jumper on
his legs but upside down. His willy and nuts were hanging
through the “V”. The elbow pads were on his knees were to either protect them
as the monster knelt over his victims messing them up (or masturbating over his
handiwork.)

When Sutcliffe
was questioned by detectives on 4th January 1981 he put up no resistance and declared
he was the Yorkshire Ripper. The following day he calmly described the many
attacked, that God had told him to murder them. Twice he lost his temper: (1) when
telling of the killing of his youngest victim and (2) when denying the murder
of Joan Harrison (true – much later DNA evidence proved a convicted sex offender
Christopher Smith did it.)

After a two week
trial Sutcliffe was sentenced to twenty concurrent sentences of life
imprisonment. After his trial he admitted two other attacks. He’s only left
prison to move to another and to visit Grange-over-Sands where his dad’s ashes
were sprinkled. It costs the public £300,000/year to keep him.

Here I am
outside the family home which he still partly owns. I’d seen photos of the
elevated house in the newspapers but imagined it was in a row of many. However
there were just two big detached houses which looked down onto houses of other designs.
I didn’t take many photos of the house and wondered if Sutcliffe’s wife Sonia
would come out screaming at me. Sonia Sutcliffe (nee Szurma)
still uses the house. She met Peter Sutcliffe on Valentine’s Day in 1967 at a
disco when she was 15 and they married seven years later. Working as a teacher
she used her salary to help buy the house and they moved into in September
1977. She remained married to the monster for 13 years following his arrest.
When she remarried she moved into a flat with her new husband but still uses
the house. You’d have thought she’d have sold it to avoid nosey people like me.
She mustn’t need the money having won at least nine libel actions against
newspapers.

When I was there
windows were open but no car was present. It was in the garage where Sutcliffe
stored the 30 weapons used to kill 13 women - hammers, spanners and sharpened screwdrivers.
Up at the rear is the kitchen sink in which Sutcliffe washed the bloodied
clothes he wore while carrying out the attacks.

West Yorkshire
Police visited this house many times to question Sutcliffe, interviewing him nine
times. It must have been a shock to Sonia when they arrived here to inform her
that her husband was The Yorkshire Ripper. They took her away for questioning
and allowed her to see her husband. She’s always denied knowing anything about
the murders.

One night the
couple had hosted a party at this house but Sutcliffe left to return to a prostitute
he had murdered and left on scrubland near Southern Cemetery in Manchester (one
of my favourite cemeteries.) He realised he’d left a new £5 note on her body
and needed to retrieve it (he couldn’t find it and mutilated the corpse then
moved it.)

Turning off the main road to Garden
Lane (the house is on the right)…

Further down the lane…

The grave from which God spoke to Sutcliffe

In court Sutcliffe pleaded to manslaughter on the grounds of
diminished responsibility as he was a tool of God's will. He had heard voices
that ordered him to kill prostitutes while working as a gravedigger at Bingley
Cemetery. He said the voices originated from a headstone of a deceased Polish
man called Zapolski. The conversation went like
this...

James Chadwin QC (for Defence) :"What was it that happened at Bingley
cemetery that you particularly remember?"

Sutcliffe
: "Something that
I felt was very wonderful at the time. I heard what I believed then and believe
now to have been God's voice. I was in the process of digging a grave. It was
like a voice saying something, but the words were all imposed on top of each
other. I could not make them out, it was like echoes. The voices were coming
directly in front of me from the top of a gravestone, which was Polish. I
remember the name on the grave to this day. It was a man called Zipolski. Stanislaw Zipolski."
(Note: the name on the gravestone is really BronislawZapolski.)

Chadwin: "Did you look at Mr Zapolski's grave?"

Sutcliffe:
"Yes."

Mr Chadwin:
"Why did you look particularly at this grave?"

Mr Sutcliffe:
"Because that is where the sound was coming from. That is what made me
walk closer to it."

Being
a geek I went to see if I could find the Zapolski grave.
The cemetery is expansive and there are old and new areas separated by trees.
After forty minutes I found it and here’re some photographs. Sutcliffe was
digging a grave to the left of this when he heard the voices telling him to rid
the streets of prostitutes.